Soft-errors in integrated circuits are caused by ionizing radiation striking, for example, the silicon regions of field effect transistors in memory cells or latches and changing the charge level stored in the cell or latch causing a flip in state of the cell or latch and thus generating an error. The error state is removed the next time data are written into the cell or latch. Some integrated circuits are bonded to ceramic substrates, which prevent using an external alpha-particle beam for soft-error testing since the beam often does not have the range required to get through the packaging materials. For this reason, advanced methods of soft-error rate testing utilize highly radioactive alpha particle emitters within the underfill that might present safety issues in fabricating test pieces, and possible contamination of the manufacturing and testing facilities if the test pieces are broken. Further, after testing, the devices need to be removed from the circuit boards and must be disposed of, creating disposal issues as well. Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations for soft error testing of integrated circuits described hereinabove.